


Arms

by flammablehat



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-18
Updated: 2011-08-18
Packaged: 2017-10-23 14:00:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/251090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flammablehat/pseuds/flammablehat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When they've both grown up a bit, Merlin gets his hug.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Arms

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Christina Perri's song by the same name, [_Arms_](http://youtu.be/FvbErM6ZTBA).

  
Gwen’s arms are fine, sculpted by the hammers and anvil of her youth and still firm now. Years of hefting and scrubbing and beating at rugs and tapestries and wet linens won’t leave her soon, even if the heaviest thing anyone will allow her to lift of late is a simple silver scepter.

Morgana’s arms were softer, white from lack of sun and touch. The memory of their tenderness around his shoulders still disorients him sometimes, in the moments between sleepy oblivion and wakefulness.

His father’s arms had been heavy and strong when he’d been alive.

Arthur wonders if they have dried to dust and bone yet, deep underground.

Leon, Gwaine, Elyan, Percival, even Lancelot — their arms are like his own: quick. Sturdy. Youthful and resilient yet, for all the abuse they happily inflict upon each other. After all, in the right hands the sword and lance and mace are just as capable of building — of creating strength — as they are of severing, piercing and crushing.

But Merlin’s arms—

Merlin’s arms are wiry, have always been so, in spite of Arthur’s best efforts to improve them. Merlin’s arms are clumsy and long, absurd in that length for lack of muscle to balance. Merlin can’t wrestle and Merlin can’t wield a weapon heavier than a staff. Merlin can’t fight like Arthur can, though Arthur has learned a humbling respect for the fighting Merlin can do. Has done.

In spite of all that, when Merlin undresses Arthur on winter’s coldest night, both a nostalgic gesture and an acknowledgment of lost things, he moves Arthur’s chilled limbs with a certainty that mimics strength. When he watches Arthur struggle, watches Arthur hide his face in his hands, Merlin’s arms pull him close.

No one can know the weight of a kingdom more than its king.

No one except, perhaps, the man who can hold the king in his arms, unflinching.


End file.
